Category Archives: SOV

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: Moron Movies (1983) and More Moron Movies (1986)

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Sept 8-14 Sketchy Comedy Week: “…plotless satires, many of which were only excuses for drug humor or gratuitous nudity sprinkled with the cheapest of gags. The typical form was a channel-changing structure, which would go from one sketch to the next under the premise that this was just another night at home watching the old boob tube. The medium is the message, baby!”

Moron Movies (1983): Len Cella started making his own movies after working in advertising and sports writing, then owning his own painting company. Then he bought a camera and started filming his own short movies. They could be about anything and often were; after showing them to family and friends, he started his own Philadephia theater. At first, only five people would show up, but as they became popular, his movies began to play on the Tonight Show and TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes. Len started sharing these movies on YouTube and Facebook until he died in 2023.

Carson showed nine episodes — Getting Rid of the Raisins, The Cheat, A Cook’s Punishment in Hell, How to Strike Out, The Chicken Comedian, Poor Man’s Remote Control, How to Discourage Pickpockets, How to Know if You’re Ugly and Rules Were Meant to Be Broken — and introduced them by saying “Before Buddy Hackett comes out, this might be a good place to do the Moron Movies because they’re a little off the wall also. They’re short, homemade, off-the-wall, bizarre little episodes.” Thanks to Frames Cinema Journal for that information.

This is SOV predating TikTok and the social media humor of today, just one man, staring at the camera. deadpanning, telling you that Jell-O isn’t a good doorstop, then proving it. You’re either going to love it or hate every second. It’s literally non-stop punchlines, with the sound of a projector, as Cella recorded these old-school clips from a projector to a VHS camera. It’s just a blitzkrieg of some things that don’t work, but then they work better because they don’t. Incredible.

You can download this from the Internet Archive.

More Moron Movies (1986): How much money did Len Cella spend on the props for his movies? This is the same thing, over and over: title card, setup, punch line, repeat. Yet it feels like a secret language, one that gets stuck in your brain and you wonder questions like the one above. What motivated this man to make so many of these movies? There’s even a documentary, King Dong, which tries to make sense of Cella.

Is his work even work? Is it just dad jokes and gross-out humor? Or is it a commentary on television, on media, on what we expect from jokes? Can it be both?

Johnny Carson said, “We read an article about a man in Philadelphia who makes his own movies. Apparently, he would make these eight-millimeter home movies and have them transferred to tape. Then I understand he hired a theater, or started to show them in a theater in Philadelphia. These are not normal movies, you understand?”

On that theater, Cella says in King Dong, “I’d read a book about El Cordobés. El Cordobés was a matador, kind of a renegade matador. And he was having trouble getting to go in the ring. They wouldn’t let him in the ring to do his thing. So, he built his own bullring. I said, that’s it. I’ll get my own theater. Fuck ‘em. So I started shopping around for places to rent. And there was a second floor of the Lansdowne theater.”

I wouldn’t say this is good, but I will say that it’s great. This is the line between people wanting to claim cult movies for their own cred and people who remember something from the distant past and can’t explain it to anyone. Almost everyone who watches this will say, “This is a waste of time.”

For others, this will invite your own debate, as you wonder how it could be.

You can download this from the Internet Archive.

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: Even Hitler Had a Girlfriend (1992)

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June 30- July 6 Puke Week!: Throwing up isn’t very funny, but making your internet friends watch a puke movie is!

Named “Best Drive-In Movie of the Year” by Joe Bob Briggs, this was directed by Richard Cramer, who also made Highway Amazon — the story of bodybuilder Christine Fetzer, who made her money driving across the country wrestling men in hotel rooms — and painted, played guitar and created art installations. When you see this film, you’ll quickly realize that it’s about more than just exploitation, even though it is exploitation.

Marcus Templeton works as a security guard and when he isn’t obsessed about his physical appearance, he’s watching porn, hiring escorts or talking to phone sex operators. His father — a face on a TV screen — keeps yelling at him as he tries weight loss creams and contracts STDs from all the sex workers he’s frequenting. He starts audio and video taping them, which ends when one of them catches him and shoots him right in the head.

Andren Scott, the star of the film, is genuinely great in what is essentially a thankless role. He was shot in a convenience store robbery and wasn’t able to be in the sequel, The Hitler Tapes.

There’s definitely an influence — or outright theft — of Aggy Read’s Boobs A Lot — in the beginning. There’s constant nudity and women on display, yet you never get turned on, just like the narrator of this, who can’t get it up despite all of the women who have been in his bed. You don’t feel sexy; you feel filthy and worried and sad. None of it feels like a life you want; you’re glad that you can finally walk away at the end.

You can watch this on Tubi.

CHATTANOOGA FILM FESTIVAL 2025: Inertia: Re-Making The Crow (2001)/James O’Barr’s The Crow (1998)

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Inertia: Re-Making The Crow (2001): Directed by David Ullman along with Matt Jackson, who in their teen years decided to take an obsession over the film The Crow and recreate it with a version closer to James O’Barr’s original graphic novel. Shot on video and in black and white, this took four years and drove Ullman’s family insane.

The original pitch for this doc was wide in its scope: “I’d like Inertia to be both an examination of how we created our movie and an exploration of the comic from which it came. Using behind-the-scenes footage, photographs, and interviews, the documentary will illustrate the process by which two 14-year-olds successfully adapted a comic of such breadth, texture, and intensity; the challenges their limited resources presented; and the creativity used to overcome them, ultimately showing how passion can overcome adversity.

Additionally, an underlying study of O’Barr’s piece and a character study of the young filmmaker for whom this project became an obsession should be included. The picture should play like Hearts of Darkness meets Looking For Richard.”

The original documentary was attacked for copyright reasons, but over the years, it has played several film festivals and is more than just about the comic book or the movie. It’s about how two young men from Ohio matured as artists and made something together that would inform the rest of their lives.

You can get this movie on VHS from Lunchmeat VHS.

James O’Barr’s The Crow (1998): Created by David Ullman and Matt Jackson over four years, throughout their high school years, this is what SOV is all about: obsessive devotion. When their friends didn’t show up, when their family didn’t understand, they kept making this movie.

On Ullman’s site, he has this quote: “There’s this aura to the book. When you look at it, you feel something. There is blood on the page, and you can sense that. It’s very affecting. I think they captured that beautifully in the Miramax film, and it was our intention at first to make a hybrid of the existing movie and the comic book. But the more serious we became about the project in general, the more we wanted to really delve into the book, explore its themes and characters, create something more of our own.”

Both star in the film, with Ullman as Eric Draven and Jackson as Top Dollar. The sets were in the family bedroom. Over four years, they learned how to take a comic book, transform it into a script and storyboard, and then create art from it.

I get it. I saw The Crow so many times in the theater, I listened to the soundtrack over and over, and there are even Halloween party photos somewhere of me as a chubby Crow, carrying my guitar and a gun. 1994 was a big time for this movie. Here’s to two filmmakers who pushed for this and made it a reality on a budget that’s so much less than Hollywood would ever attempt.

You can watch this on YouTube thanks to Lunchmeat VHS.

You can watch this and many other films at CFF by buying a pass on their website. Over the next few days, I’ll be posting reviews and articles, and updating my Letterboxd list of watched films.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Black Devil Doll from Hell (1984)

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Chester Novell Turner made this movie and Tales from the QuadeaD Zone.

It is enough.

He had been writing horror stories, doing home remodeling and attending a filmmaking correspondence course. Home video cameras had democratized movie making, and you can make fun of Turner’s films, but what have you done?

Well, people thought Turner died until 2013, when Massacre Video tracked him down and got permission to release his films.

With his girlfriend at the time, Shirley L. Jones, in the lead role, Turner pressed record and made some art, if by art you mean a movie in which a Rick James devil doll has sex with a woman, ruining her for other men, even when his head falls off mid-romping. A doll bought in a hobby shop with a tongue made from latex and a coat hanger, operated by Turner’s nephew.

This isn’t the kind of movie with fleeting sex scenes. These go on so long that they go from gratuitous to just plain demented, and there’s never really been anything else like it. What if Amelia hadn’t run from her Zuni fetish doll and spread for him? This is that. I can’t believe it either, but here it is, ready for you to be upset about. Or enjoy. Maybe somewhere in the middle?

Check out Jennifer Upton’s review.

You can buy this from Massacre Video for $10, but you should spend twice that on this one.

APRIL MOVIE THON 4: Feeders (1996)

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April 24: Polonia Bros — Whether alone or with his brother John, Mark Polonia has made so many movies. Pick one off this list.

John and Mark Polonia and Jon McBride made this movie for $500 and it has more heart in it than anywhere near its budget will tell you.

Derek (McBride) and Bennett (John Polonia) are driving through Pennsylvania — home of the Polonias — and have no idea that a small UFO just landed and ate a park ranger. Even when they’re on a date with Michelle (Melissa Torpy) and Donna (Maria Russo) — the daughter of the now digested man — they have no clue. Then they hit a man with their car, and before he dies, he keeps telling them about little men.

By the end of this movie, most of this small town has been chewed on, Bennett has been cloned by aliens and — spoiler — Derek kills the wrong one before multiple UFOs descend.

Say what you will about the puppet aliens in this, but this movie was distributed by Blockbuster Video shortly after the release of Independence Day. It was the most popular independent release of the year and has had two sequels, Feeders 2: Slay Bells and Feeders 3: The Final Meal. Keep in mind this was made by teenagers with a video camera.

You can watch this on Tubi.

APRIL MOVIE THON 4: Things (1993)

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April 5: Visual Vengeance Day — Write about a movie released by Visual Vengeance. Here’s a list to help you find a movie.

No, not that Things.

This Things has had so many sequels — I watched Things II before it — and it’s an anthology film of two stories and a wraparound which is directed by Eugene James (Sorority House Vampires) and written by Mike Bowler (Hell Spa, Fatal Images). A woman (Kinder Hunt) catches her husband Jack (in a hotel room, sleeping with his mistress Jane (Maegen). She ties her to a chair and decides that she’s going to tell her two stories before she kills her, but ends up keeping her in a garage with all of the other old mistresses. Some are alive, and many are dead, and how do they keep them all fed?

The first of those stories is “The Box,” directed and written by Dennis Devine (Dead Girls). It’s the story of a small town run by a mayor and his corrupt officials, who are upset that women are moving there to start a den of sin and sleeping with the menfolk. There’s also a slug creature who lives in a box, and many of the area’s men are obsessed with one of the girls, Tulip (Kathleen O’Donnel).

The other tale is “The Thing in a Jar,” which was directed by Jay Woelfel (Asylum of Darkness, Beyond Dream’s Door) and written by Steve Jarvis (Amazon Warrior).

Woefel said, “Things was my first feature as a director in LA (about half of a feature). I didn’t know that part of my job was to help re-unite a group of people who had started to make a film and then stopped. As the new kid on the project, I was someone who could excite the rest to finish what had seemingly ended badly.

My episode in the anthology is about a woman who has really violent dreams in which her seemingly lovely husband does increasingly horrible things to her. My marching orders from producer Dave Sterling were to include some nudity and make it really violent.

The film’s structure is a largely comical wraparound story and two actual stories within that. It seems like a workable anthology structure that could be used more.

It was a wild film in many ways, including the monster in my episode, which is a melted-together slimy hodgepodge of eyes, hands, and teeth. But not in the way that meant it was shot on film; this time, it was videotaped. This seemingly modest film was re-released several times and spawned two sequels.

Julia (Courtney Lercara) is in a horrible marriage with Leon (Owen Rutledge) — he tells her that all she has to do in her life is “eat, sleep and fuck” — and learns that he wants her dead. This gets gory as it goes on and feels like an EC Comics story, along with plenty of SOV gore and all the sound problems you expect from the genre. If it bothers you, you’re watching the wrong movies.

Keep an eye out for Jeff Burr (director of Puppet Master 4 and 5) and special effects artist Mike Tristano in this.

Things isn’t as delirious as the Canadian one, but it’s filled with video-era charms. It’s short, sweet and filled with so much grue—and bad accents—that you can’t help but love it.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Zombie Rampage (1992)

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Todd Sheets forever.

Back in 1992, it didn’t seem like zombies would be coming back from their graves. They weren’t mainstream. It was left to gut crunching gore lovers like Sheets to make low budget tributes to the films they loved. This starts with two gangs — Sheets leads one — fighting in the streets of Kansas City, leaving bodies everywhere. Most gangs would regroup and get better guns. One of these ones gets an occult book, conducts a ritual and all hell breaks loose.

As Glenn would sing, “Yea, evil is as evil does.”

Tommy (Dave Byerly) and Dave (Erin Kehr) barely make it to a bar, years before the Winchester served the same purpose, holed up with their girlfriends while the dead are alive outside the doors. Sheets has said for people to turn this movie off, but look, when everyone is drinking in a bar and a stolen song from The Beyond plays, I stick around. I mean, this starts with a fist fight set to a “Spirit In the Sky” cover and once, I had a girl from Lawrence, KS write out all the lyrics to that song and mail it to me as part of our long distance romance. I wondered if that means anything, like if Norman Greenbaum was from Kansas, but no. Sometimes life makes no sense.

More on Sheets hating this, thanks to IMDB: “It took a year and a half because I was held hostage by an insane cameraman (who thought he was in charge and always wanted more money), a local bar owner named Lonzo who was supposed to be funding the film but disappeared and a cast of well meaning local theater students who went away for the holidays and some of them didn’t come back! Some left because they were tired of being held up for 3 or 4 hours by the jerk cameraman every time we were supposed to shoot. I was left with 68% of a once good script and I finished it the only way I knew. It was my first film. It was NOT shot on VHS — but on 3/4 inch video and Betacam like the TV stations of the time used. It was a horrible experience and I almost never made another film.”

Sheets would make better movies, but look, if you come up with a movie indebted to Mattei, Fulci and Romero, I’m going to love it. Every review I read calling this sloppy and amateurish, well, fine. But did it entertain you? Nobody wants to talk about that, they just want to be high and mighty, cooler than the films they talk about.

If you’re wondering, does this seem like a movie that Visual Vengeance would put out? Well, the trailers are on their latest Blu-rays and it comes from Decrepit Crypt of Nightmares, which also has Suburban Sasquatch amongst its fifty movies for one low price. Some would say you’d overpaid, but I’m the kind of viewer to drop big money on this set if I ever find it.

Maligno (1986)

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Made by a teenage Joe Zaso, this movie was exactly what I was looking for: a SOV Giallo that’s “Phenomena meets Eyes of Laura Mars by way of an ABC Afterschool Special.” Made in the director’s teen years — he was 15 — it finds Susan Galligan (Karen Komornik) starting at a new school by the name of Hartcourt Academy, a dark and foreboding place — shots from the outside look very Tanz Akademie — that has already claimed the lives of several schoolgirls. Much like an Argento Giallo, Susan is also psychic, which means that she can see things before they happen, leading her to become the detective in this and discover who the killer is.

Between the drone music on the soundtrack, the toughness of the girls with NYC accents and the soft VHS quality, this was a dream odyssey into Joe’s teenage mind. I had the chance to ask him some questions about the making of this film and I’m so excited to share them with you.

B and S About Movies: Joe, I have a million questions.

Joe Zaso: It’s Argento’s Greatest Hits as told by a 15-year-old? If you took a shot for every Argento nod, you’d be bombed within the first 2 minutes.

B and S: I’m amazed you had access to all of these Argento films in 1986 and at such a young age. All we had in my hometown was the VHS of Creepers.

Joe: I had just seen Creepers on video before I made this.

B and S: Had you seen Suspiria before you made Maligno?

Joe: Yep. Donald Farmer from Splatter Times sent me a bootleg VHS of Suspiria (the R-rated version) filmed off a screen and a decent UK screener of Tenebre. I had also seen Deep Red shredded on Channel 9’s Fright Night. Plus, I had just seen Demons in a theater the same weekend that Poltergeist II opened, just before I started shooting.

I was going to do a third horror anthology as well as a very ambitious zombie movie (monsters from VHS rentals come to life) in Horrormax. But after seeing Creepers, I was in LOVE!

B and S: This feels like a slasher made by someone who has just had their mind opened by Italian movies.

Joe: I was into slasher movies and Romero. H.G. Lewis and Argento sparked it. As you can gather, it’s a hodge podge of so many Argentos. It’s my favorite of all my 80s movies, because it probably works the best and isn’t too incoherent or over-ambitious.

It basically foreshadowed the Giallo being my favorite movie type to make.

B and S: It’s a wood-paneled New York Giallo!

Joe: All the music came from Pennsylvania. Tim Frey and Richard Han, who was from New Castle. He was a penpal who almost got me a role as a zombie in Day of the Dead over Thanksgiving weekend.

B and S: I love the accents.

Joe: “Yeahhhh, Mawww. I know. It’s rainin’ really hoddd.”

B and S: It’s just amazing that at 15, you made a full Giallo.

Joe: It was my calling.

Thanks, as always, to Joe. You can check out a past interview with him and reviews of some of his other films, like Screambook, Screambook II and It’s Only a Movie. You can watch this on YouTube or order it as part of the Lost In the 80s: The Joe Zaso Collection from Terror Vision.

UNSUNG HORRORS HORROR GIVES BACK 2024: The Mummy’s Dungeon (1993)

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Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: Viewers Choice

Has my love for bootleg mummy movies gone too far?

Rameses Karis (Sal Longo) is definitely one of those guys who would be in a camera club in the 1950s, paying gorgeous women to take photos while he’s surrounded by other socially awkward men. Yet it’s 1993, so he is able to invite all manner of models to his house where he takes perverted snaps of them and then uses their bodies and blood to fuel the mummy (Dave Castiglione) that is sleeping the sleep of death in his basement. Or, in his words, “I need virgin’s blood to revive the ancient warriors and put Egypt back on the map.” That’s why he’s paying girls of loose morals to come over and strip down for him and his camera.

There’s no nudity, which makes this feel even pervier — the True Detective magazine effect that I have mentioned before — and it’s the same thing over and over (and over), as the cameraman takes photos, spies on the women undressed, sends in the mummy, they faint and then they kill the woman and drain her blood. Repetition is a major part of comedy but it is even more a major element of a fetish, even one where someone wants to see women faint and get their blood drank by a bandage-wrapped undead Egyptian.

This was released by I.D.S. Productions/WAVE Productions, and yes that last company should let you know that this is totally non-porn porn. I both want to meet and don’t wish to ever know the person who jerks off to this and there’s no way I’m shaking their hand or even fist bumping them to say hello.

The women include Marlene (Michelle Caporaletti, Hung Jury), Marilyn (Cristie Clark, Curse of the Swamp Creature 2), Susan (Terri Lewandowski, Wayne’s mother in Santa Claws) and Dawn (Dawn Lewis).

Rameses made the mistake of killing Kris (Amanda Madison, Red Lips), so her twin sister Jean (also played by Amanda Madison) hunts him down. She’s nearly killed by a mummy before a policewoman (Clancy McCauley, The Kind of Meat That You Can’t Buy at the Store) and Jay (Aven Warren, who did makeup for many movies like this) shoot the shutterbug sadist and pours Egyptian water on the mummy. Roll the rasterized credits.

I’m not going to say that this was good but it’s definitely a movie that I can watch and get a vibe out of. It’s just drone, the same thing over and over, a mummy looking like he got all his makeup at Spencer’s at best and lots of bad photo sessions and alright blood drinking. It’s calming, as I’m anxious now trying to get a job and I’m not telling anyone in my interviews that to find my zen I sit and watch films where dime store wrapped cadavers munch down on vacant eyed women and yes, some dudes jerk off to it, but I use it to get high.

I mean, I want a job.

You can watch this on YouTube.

UNSUNG HORRORS HORROR GIVES BACK 2024: Blood Frenzy (1987)

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Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: In Memoriam

The pedigree of this movie: It was based on a story Ray Dennis Steckler called “Warning – No Trespassing”, scripted by Ted Newsom (Time Tracers, Evil Spawn) and directed and produced by Hal Freeman, who made his money from adult movies like Sex Rink, Radio K-KUM and the Caught from Behind Series. He wanted to go mainstream, so he paid for this movie all by himself.

There was a reason for that. In 1983, as the conservative Reagan White House and Attorney Edwin Meese started cracking down on porn, raiding the set of Freeman’s Caught from Behind 2. He was convicted of five counts of pandering but was given probation. This took years to resolve, up until 1988. Freeman died a year later, but the case that the religious right brought against him ended up legalizing pornography and eliminating any grey area. Then again, Roe v. Wade was a thing at one point too.

Freeman’s Hollywood Video started a mainstream Hollywood Family Video and this was the first release. It begins with psychologist Dr. Barbara Shelley (Wendy MacDonald) bringing her patients to the desert to try her confrontation therapy and get them to function as a group.

Those patients are Vietnam vet Rick Carlson (Tony Montero), who is dealing with flashbacks; the sex-addicted Cassie (Lisa Savage); Crawford (John Clark), who is an alcoholic; Jean (Monica Silveria) who resists any attempt to be touched; Dory (Lisa Loring, who was Wednesday Addams and by this point was married to porn star Jerry Butler and doing makeup on adult sets as Maxine Factor; she also co-wrote Traci’s Big Trick, an adult film about exactly how Traci Lords made movies as an underage teen), a former fashion model and lesbian who hates everyone and the hateful Dave (Hank Garrett, the foreman inspired by Paul Kersey in Death Wish).

Why does the doctor think she can control six mentally ill people in the middle of nowhere with no help? The first session ends up with Dave and Rick fighting each other and by the next day, their RV is ruined, the radio doesn’t have a microphone, all of their food is ruined and Dave is dead. One by one, they find a jack in the box and are killed.

This was late to the slasher cycle and even though it’s shot on video, this has some great gore and the last few moments really go for it. Speaking of going hard, Lisa Loring is a force of nature in this. RIP — she died last year — but she’s screaming every line and ends up scoring one of the women in a scene that cuts before any sapphic action, making you wonder if this really was directed by a man who went to jail for the sins of the adult industry.

There was one other Hollywood Family release. Earthquake Survival, which was written by Newsom and Brinke Stevens. It was directed by Freeman — who signed a certificate you could be proud of if you watched this — and hosted by Shelley Duval. It was sold exclusively at Sav-On stores in California.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Sources:

The Bloody Pit of Horror: Blood Frenzy